Talk:Fetal movement

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A fact from Fetal movement appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 2 August 2007.

[edit] Vaughan

This article currently has extensive references to the book "How Life Begins: The Science of Life in the Womb" by Christopher Vaughan (1996). Unfortunately, this source is not available online. Therefore, it would be helpful to include quoted excerpts in the footnotes. If I get a chance, I'll try to pick up a copy at the library, in order to extract the relevant excerpts that are currently being relied upon by this article.

I am particularly concerned about the first paragraph of this article, which seems to have some inconsistencies with the following reliable online source:

De Vries, Johanna et al. “Fetal Motility in the First Half of Pregnancy”, in Continuity of Neural Functions from Prenatal to Postnatal Life, page 63 (1984 Cambridge University Press, edited by Heinz F. R. Prechtl).

For example, De Vries writes that reflexive movements and spontaneous movements first appear about the same time, rather than the reflexive movements starting significantly earlier. Also, De Vries writes that spontaneous movement patterns of a normal fetus are believed to be supraspinally determined, because they do not occur in anencephalic fetuses. In contrast, the first paragraph of the present article says that spontaneous movements arise from self-generated nerve impulses originating in the spinal cord.Ferrylodge (talk) 22:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)